Technology invented by scientists from Johns Hopkins
and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
can make three-dimensional imaging quicker, easier, less
expensive and more accurate, the
researchers say.

This new technology, dubbed FINCH for Fresnel
incoherent correlation holography, could have
implications in medical applications such as endoscopy,
ophthalmology, CT scanning, X-ray imaging and
ultrasounds, co-inventor Gary Brooker said. It also may be
applicable to homeland security screening,
3-D photography and 3-D video, he said.

A report presenting the first demonstration of this
technology — with a 3-D microscope called a
FINCHSCOPE — will appear in the March issue of Nature
Photonics and is available now on the journal's
Web site.

"This is a slow process that is restricted to
microscope objectives that have less than optimal
resolving power," said Brooker, a research professor of chemistry in the
Krieger School of Arts and
Sciences who also has an appointment in the Whiting School
of Engineering's Advanced Technology
Laboratory. "For this reason, holography currently is not
widely applied to the field of 3-D
fluorescence microscopic imaging."

The FINCH technology, and the FINCHSCOPE, uses
microscope objectives with the highest
resolving power, a spatial light modulator, a
charge-coupled device camera and some simple filters to
enable the acquisition of 3-D microscopic images without
the need for scanning multiple planes.

The Nature Photonics article reports on a use
of the FINCHSCOPE to take a 3-D still image,
but moving 3-D images are coming, according to Brooker and
co-inventor Joseph Rosen, professor of
electrical and computer engineering at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev in Israel.

"With traditional 3-D imaging, you cannot capture a
moving object," Brooker said. "With the
FINCHSCOPE, you can photograph multiple planes at once,
enabling you to capture a 3-D image of a
moving object. Researchers now will be able to track
biological events happening quickly in cells."

The research was funded by CellOptic and a National
Science Foundation grant with the
technology being demonstrated using equipment at the Johns
Hopkins Montgomery County Campus
Microscopy Center.

Brooker and Rosen are founders of Cell-Optic, which
owns the FINCH technology. The terms of
Brooker's involvement with Cell-Optic are being managed in
accordance with Johns Hopkins' conflict-
of-interest policy.